Had a call with Roel Peters this week to talk about the recent news this week. Here's what I learned:

The Roost Smart battery is available for preorder from Amazon for $34.99 for a single and $64.99 for a two pack

The Roost batteries will ship on September 1, 2015

The company has added a new battery replacement option, meaning when the Roost Smart battery runs out of power (they told me the battery has a 5 year battery life), you will be able to order a new battery that can connect into the electronics of existing battery. In other words, they are making the electronics modular and not requiring consumers to replace the Wi-Fi electronics every time the battery runs out.

Like I wrote when Roost first told me the specifics of the Smart Battery is I like the idea of a retrofit approach. As Cameron Robertson of Lockitron told me in this week's podcast (published tomorrow - stay tuned), he sees the evolution of approaches moving towards more consumer-friendly and sensible in smart home, as we go from the full replacement approach (i.e. Nest Protect) to one where we can leverage the existing investment such as with Leeo and Roost.

As we saw last week with Leeo, new approaches take time and don't always immediately resonate with consumers for any number of reasons. That said, the Roost approach is a fairly straightforward one and, if they can get exposure to consumers, I expect the low-cost entry point into smart alarms and smart homes could do very well.

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Chamberlain has been selling a connected garage door retrofit kit for 18 months now. The product is called MyQ Garage, it works with almost every garage door opener brand and costs $100 on Amazon. Its available for a little bit more at the Apple Store, BBY and more.

The MyQ Garage solves at least three point problems:

The u-turn when you forget if you closed the garage door.
Having to drive home to open the garage door for the delivery guy
Knowing when a loved one comes home

70% of Americans living in single family homes enter their home through the garage door. This fact begs the question: who needs a connected door lock?